


As Long As We Have

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, bed snuggles, post 5x12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 16:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14060595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: In which Fitz can't sleep and Jemma decides to make the most of things.A 5x12/x13 missing scene.





	As Long As We Have

Jemma isn’t aware she’s alone in the bed until she isn’t again, waking up to a sudden rush of cold air and the thin mattress listing heavily to one side. “Sorry,” Fitz whispers, though there’s no one to disturb but her, “didn’t mean to wake you.”

“ ’s all right,” she says, brushing her tangle of hair out of her face to blink slowly up at him. He hovers guiltily, one knee on the bed with the other foot still on the floor, and helps her tuck her hair behind her ear with gentle hands. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know—near four?”

The alarm is set to go off at half five—they managed that last night, before being distracted with other, more pleasant concerns—so she stretches a hand towards him expectantly, one eyebrow raised to show she means business. He bends over to kiss her shoulder before getting fully back into bed, rolling to face her and pulling the covers up to his ear. His feet, near but not tangled with hers, radiate chill; a tiny drop of water rolls down his cheek to disappear into his beard. She uses one finger to trace a second on a path around his eye. “You went to the bathroom?”

He nods. “Deke’s in there, having a shower. No steam, though, so I think he’s used whatever hot water there was.”

“I suppose we can’t begrudge him a hot shower. I don’t think they exist in the future.”

“No showers?”

“Only sponge baths. For the lucky ones.”

He takes her hand from his face and kisses her knuckles just below her brand-new ring, then folds both her hands between his and rests them on the small space of mattress between them. Their rings are hidden, but she can feel the coolness of his against the back of her hand and the press of hers into the pad of his warm palm. She wonders if his clasp is so tight because he likes the reminder as an imprint on his flesh, or if there’s something more painful he’s trying to block out. The fact that he won’t meet her eyes speaks to the latter, as do the quick breaths brushing across their skin. She has learnt since the Pod, the hypoxia, to listen to his silences. “Did you have a nightmare?”

He snorts, nothing funny about it. “Have to sleep to have a nightmare.”

“You haven’t slept?” She rises onto one elbow. He can always sleep, even if it’s broken; when they both startle awake in a tangle of limbs and panic she’s the one that struggles to drop off again. For him to not sleep at all after the long, busy, emotional day they had—

“I just keep thinking, every time I close my eyes.”

The slight pause before _thinking_ weighs it down; she knows better than to hope his mind is spinning with plans for Elena’s new arms or fondly recalling their sunlit nuptials. She bites her lip, hesitant, but surely a wife’s ( _wife!_ ) privileges outweigh those of a girlfriend? Detaching one of her hands from their clasp, she rubs her thumb over his eyebrow and down the slope of his nose, across the smooth-and-prickly span of his cheek. “And what of the thousand things that happened today are you thinking about?”

He closes his eyes and leans into her hand, inhaling slowly before letting it all out in a rush: “About what you said. About...our next adventure.”

She sucks in the breath he had exhaled, feeling it solidify in her throat. With everything they had to worry about, her declaration of love and hope being the one to keep him awake at night makes her want to weep. Struggling to speak past the lump, she says quickly, “Fitz, I didn’t mean—it’s only—we’re _already_ a family together. We don’t have to talk about...anything else yet. Maybe someday, but of course it’s a discussion. We won’t do anything we don’t both agree to.”

“Not that,” he says quickly, his eyes flying open. “No, not—Jemma, that would be...incredible. Our family would be incredible.”

 _Incredible_. She rolls the word over in her mind, savouring it; Fitz has a way with words, when he chooses to use them. “But?” she presses when it’s clear he doesn’t intend to say anything else.

He sighs, rolling onto his stomach and going up on his elbows, and pulls her left hand towards the middle of the bed. They both look down at her ring. His thumb caresses the stone, circling slowly. “But. This is a ring from a charity shop that neither of us chose because we’re fugitives from the law. We’re living in an underground bunker and we’ve just got back from a dystopic future that somehow we helped create. Jemma, time is—” The hand not on hers tightens into a fist and slams into the mattress with a hollow thud. “Our next adventure is going to be nothing like we hoped.”

Twisting her fingers around his, she leans forwards to rest her forehead against his shoulder. Fitz hasn’t ever told her what he hopes for their future, though she’s been clear what she wants—has always wanted, before she knew how she could have it. Perthshire, science, their children, a dog. Maybe two dogs. Maybe two dogs and a cat. His proposal was the first proof she’d had that he saw that future for them, too, and the knowledge that he wants the rest makes her heart race. But a quick glimpse around the room makes Fitz’s point clear: the road from here to their perfect future has never seemed quite so far, even to her. And he, poor man, has an added layer of despair to contend with. “Time is fixed,” she says quietly, finishing the sentence he left incomplete. “You think we can’t have the future we want because we’ve seen the future that has to be." 

His head droops as though he’s too tired to keep holding it up. “You heard what Yo-yo said. ‘It’s all coming true.’”

“Yes, I heard her.” Only halfway, far more occupied with making sure Elena didn’t bleed out than whatever she was saying in her delirium, but yes. “But Fitz, we don’t know what she saw, what she knows. It could be like the last time someone saw the future—we assume everything happens one way, but we have it completely the wrong way around. Ash, not snow, Fitz.”

Pushing himself upright, he shoves away the covers and sits back on his heels with his arms crossed over his chest. “Because there’s only a little difference between a few glimpses of the future and a few days. Really easy to get mistaken about what’s actually going on.”

She sits fully up as well, matching him as always. “Fine, that’s fair. But you’re assuming causality—that what happened to Elena necessitates the rest of it. How can that be true? How can we know that?”

“I’m not assuming any such thing. I am assuming that the future that we saw will come to pass because the future that we saw _has_ already come to pass, because time as we experience it is a construct. We can’t change it any more than we can change the past.”

“All right,” she says, armed with a new weapon, “then why will we build a time machine to send our past selves to the future? If events are fixed—”

“—they’re fixed. We have to build a time machine to send our past selves to the future because we’ve already been to the future, and if we don’t build the time machine that will cause a paradox. It’s impossible; it has to have been done.”

“And if we don’t do it?”

“Someone else will,” he says heavily. “We don’t know for certain it was us. It might be someone who comes after we’re gone, cobbling together our work. Who can say what happens in the intervening 74 years, except me orbiting a distant planet somewhere with Enoch. Technically, I exist in two points right now. I probably shouldn’t be here at all.”

“You _should,_ ” she says fiercely, one hand flying to grip his knee. “There is no point in any timeline where you should not be with me.”

His ramrod-stiff shoulders loosen, just a little, and his hands fall to his sides, palms upwards. “Jemma, you know I’m going to do everything I can to make sure we’re never separated again. That might be all I’ve ever wanted—funny feeling, isn’t it?”

His lopsided half-smile is more rueful than anything, but she squeezes his leg and offers a whole one of hers in return.

“Only,” he continues, “I can’t see how things are going to turn out right. Humanity will be enslaved to alien overlords, Jemma, clinging to existence in this very bunker because, apparently, one of our best friends made the world crack like an egg. How can we have a future, knowing that’s what happens?”

As he speaks, all the anger drains out of his voice, leaving him as fragile as the foam left over from washing up, and she can’t do anything other than what she does: slide forwards until she can gather him into her arms, let his head drop onto her shoulder, and gently stroke the soft knobs of his neck and spine as he lets a few hot tears splatter her collarbone. It’s her privilege, she thinks, resting her cheek against his hair. If it is—and it is—a privilege to be loved by Fitz it is a privilege to love him, too, in all his awkwardness and brilliance and stubbornness and beauty. She had known that from the beginning, when a simple conversation opened her eyes to what it might mean to have a friend; if she hadn’t known everything that would follow, well, she had already grasped the essentials. And if she had known? If she had, Jemma admits to herself, they would have ended here anyway.

“Fitz.”

His hands tighten against the small of her back. _I’m listening._  

“The thing is,” she says, “we don’t know _our_ future, exactly. We don’t think we’re around in 2091—well, we’d be, oh, 104 then, so we might not be around even in an ideal world.” He lets out a quick breath, almost a laugh; bolstered, she continues. “There were so many people, we have no way of knowing if any of them might have known us. Assuming we didn’t change our names, being fugitives from the law. We might have seen humanity’s future, but we didn’t see anything specific to you and me.” 

“Jem—” he starts, lifting his head.

She meets his fathomless gaze and holds it, steady and sure as her grip on his collar ninety feet below the surface. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter—whatever the future holds, it’s going to be _ours_. That’s incredible enough, I think.”

He takes a shaky, shallow breath, the last shuddering of his tears, and rests his forehead against hers for another. The third they share between them as he presses his lips to hers earnestly, with none of the giddy playfulness that has characterized their kisses today; he always means it when he kisses her, but this one is deeper somehow, a _thank you_ and a _me too_ and an _I do_ all over again. She returns the sentiment eagerly. It doesn’t solve the problem, she knows; his theories about spacetime have been held far too long-held to be overcome even by True Love’s Kiss. There will be no convincing him otherwise. And he may be right, honestly; she’d be a rotten scientist not to admit that physics doesn’t care much about people’s lives. As long as Fitz is here and hers, though, she can’t lose hope entirely. She will hold it for the both of them.

“I have never done anything to deserve you,” he says, the circles under his eyes dark but not heavy.

She kisses him lightly, serious. “It’s quite mutual, you know. And yet, here we are.”

“Married,” he says. “Even though Coulson didn’t say the words, it’s implied that we’re together for better and worse, right?”

“And always have been,” she promises. “And always will be, whatever the future holds.”

“I still think—”

“I know,” she says, pressing her lips together. “But promise me, Fitz, that we won’t let the life we’re afraid of stop us from living the life we’ve got.”

"Do you mean." He swallows. "We'll still do everything we would do if the world weren't ending?"

Perthshire, science, pets, children. "The holiday to British Columbia is out at the moment, I think. But besides that—everything."

For the first time, he looks away from her, staring at his blazer and her elephantine gown draped over a desk chair. She waits patiently, knowing she’s asked a great deal but confident of his answer. Their wedding was a promise in more ways than one. When he turns back to her they might almost be in their sun-dappled forest again, if she went by the light in his eyes: “For you, I will try. Wife.”

She can’t help the smile that breaks across her face at her new title, and neither, it seems, can he. Leaning in to kiss her again, he accidentally unbalances them both and they tumble to the mattress, giggling. “Sorry,” he mumbles against her cheek, “lack of coordination is a hallmark of exhaustion.”

“My poor Fitz. Next time wake me up and we can sort it out together.”

“You always look so peaceful sleeping,” he says. “One of us should be well rested, at least. My head is too loud to let me.”

She wriggles until she can see him, all creased forehead and pale skin and lines around his eyes, and kisses the corner of his mouth. “You think I always look peaceful sleeping because you’re there. Without you I toss and turn all night.”

“You toss and turn anyway.”

“Not where it counts.” She snakes her arm from between them and holds it up, inviting him in. “Come here, husband. I’ll take the next watch.”

He flies in like a homing pigeon, rests his head over her heart and wraps his right arm across her body, searching for her hand. She gives it to him with a smile that tangles in his curls along with her ring. His eyelashes brush sweetly across her skin.

“How much time before the alarm goes off?” he murmurs, body already growing heavy.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “We’ll make the most of whatever time we’ve got.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just think, personally, there are a lot of reasons that Fitz might not be sleeping, most of which are less than fun. Someone needs to help this poor man; thank goodness he has a wife!


End file.
